More Things About People and their Money that Make Me Angry

While not everyone was happy with my list of things about people and their money that make me angry, I find that my list of these things continues to grow. This is a new list gathered from interviews and personal experiences of the not so intelligent, moral, or legal things people do with their money.

Work for hire. “Some believe that [since] they’ve paid you, they own you,” states contributor, Jewel. The suggestion that having been hired for gainful employment makes you someone’s minion is totally asinine and demeaning. Worse yet are those who remain in that position because they do get paid.

Complaining about toll booths. I am personally very happy to help pay for the high maintenance of a road. Some toll roads will become freeways once the cost of construction has been covered, but others are toll roads forever. Some states are not allotted enough to maintain their roads. Take a multi-state road trip and see what I mean. Crossing state lines is sometimes like stepping through a portal. Be happy toll funds go to what they should.

Refusing to pay parking meters. Cities are not non-profit organizations, and those parking places belong to them. Pay to rent your spot, or walk. If you live in town, you are granted street parking if it can be granted. You’d complain if the city just parked their big trucks in your space, wouldn’t you?

Sending cash in the mail. Not only is this illegal, but it’s not real intelligent. We send checks in security envelopes to avoid theft of the check and bank information, so why tempt someone who might tamper with mail with a little lump of cash?

Filling out credit applications for a free gift. If you aren’t serious about getting cards, don’t fill out the application. The people on college campuses with little key chains or water bottles in exchange for the information that grants access to your credit report are not the kind of people you want to be associating with. You will get cards in the mail. Someone will steal your information. It will screw up your credit report. Go buy a fricking water bottle at the bookstore.

Investing in companies because of the name. Shiny Exxon numbers sprinkled around your portfolio might make you smile today, but do remember they are using the millions they were fined for that oil spill on litigation instead of paying out to those who won the class-action suit against them.

Falling for email or phone scams. Know your bank’s policies on when or how it will ask for private information. Most of them will never ask you over the phone, and most will never call you. For this reason, you should never ever give your bank information via email or phone. Just, don’t. Be responsible and look up anything you find questionable at snopes.com or truthorfiction.com. You may also consult an associate at your financial institution.

Petcessories: Clothes and monogrammed bowls are fine. They make pet owners happy, and many dogs don’t mind. But a water purifier for a dog? Most dogs will drink out of the toilet if given the chance. They do not need purified water, but they do need to avoid chlorinated water. To dechlorinate water, store it in natural sunlight in a clear container with a lid. Don’t spend $350 to do the same job.

Having an expensive habit when rent/mortgage is tight. There are higher priorities in life than a cigarette or cell phone, and choosing to buy these instead of paying for shelter for the family is dangerous and irresponsible. However, if you meet your housing cost just fine but continue to complain about it, please don’t be doing it from your cell.

Stores disallowing Salvation Army bell ringers. Because…it deters customers? I suppose the customers who would be deterred by a bell ringer could be worse, but I can’t imagine why a store would want to attract that kind of stingy, penny-pinching, non-Spirit-of-Giving kind of person anyway; everybody roots for Scrooge at the end of the movie. People have a sense of giving. Don’t advertise that you don’t.

There are millions of people in the world who do all different things with their money. I try to accept our differences, but it probably won’t keep me from complaining about what I find offensive. It just strengthens my confidence and teaches me about the way I feel about my own hard-earned cash.

It’s amazing how most of these things are “not your problem”. Some are legal issues…
Of course I respect your right to complain, but you seem to have very little respect for people’s right to mess up their own lives. I’d give you a big fat MYOB…

And as an atheist who gives year round, I don’t shop at bellringer stores during the holiday season if I can help it.
I resent the implication that just because it’s a religious holiday, giving has become more important. And the recent history of discrimination against gays. Doing wrong things even if you do a lot of right things still makes you wrong.

I agree with all your points, except for the last one. However, it might not be something you should get “angry” about. My point about the last one is that I don’t agree with the method of fund-raising that the salvation army does, and that is the main reason why I don’t donate to them. More-over I don’t agree with bell-ringing fund-raising period. I also believe that a donor should be well educated about what they donate too, don’t just give for the sake of giving, instead make a conscious, well thought out contribution to a worthwhile cause.

Since when is it illegal to put cash in the mail? I don’t think it is. Would you be angry if I sent you cash? Give me you address, I’ll send you some and we’ll see how angry you get. You can even notify the FBI if you like. 😉

The value of many things I mail exceeds the $5 – $20 cash I might put in a birthday card and mail. In fact, I think tempting boxed items are just as likely to disappear from the mail as is cash. Probably more likely. It is never obvious that I’m mailing cash. But a box tends to say “merchandise.”

I still think you are exaggerating for effect when you say that all these things make you angry.

I always enjoyed your postings but now that you have confused investing with spending mixed with copied rants that makes you look like a sheep. I think you should take a day off and get creative again.

I didn’t think you were that angry and I enjoyed reading your observations and opinions. They made me think. Saving and spending are practical decisions. They are also ethical decisions. Another reason for paying the meter is .25 is alot cheaper than a $50 ticket.

I sold my car when I moved and can no longer afford to drive, so it’s not a personal issue for me, but I don’t like the newfangled parking meters here which have eliminated the parking “float” drivers used to enjoy with coin-operated meters.

Here, there is a meter box in the middle of the block. When you park, you feed the meter and it dispenses a printed ticket with a gummed tab. You then stick the ticket on the inside of your front passenger window (the tab is gummed on the proper side for this purpose) so that the meter enforcers can walk up or down the block and see whether or not your time is expired.

Let’s say you park at 1:00 and pay for one hour of parking, Your ticket will display 2:00 as the time it expires. If you leave at 1:30, the next person to park no longer gets the (formerly) “free” remaining time until 2:00.

Yes, you CAN stick your ticket on the meter box for someone else to use, but if the next person arrives at, say, 1:40 and wants to park until 2:40, that person has to pay for a full hour on a new ticket – there’s no way for them to just pay for 2:00 to 2:40 unless they return at 2:00 which is impractical.

Toll booths were never meant to exist – President Eisenhower created the gasoline tax in order to pay for road maintenance. However, since the roads were brand new and didn’t need repair, all the funds that were appropriated for it got earmarked for pet projects. When the roads finally needed repair, oops, all the money is gone – so typical government response is “lets raise taxes”! (either that, or sell the entire road to a foreign company like Cintra) Viola, problem solved. Gasoline tax actually COULD pay for road maintenance now, but the government would rather boondoggle extra revenues than eliminate the toll booths.